Back for more home made songwriting and recording goodness it's your fantastic hosts Tony Butterworth and Dave Criddle.

This week we discuss

Pro Sounding Home Recordings
Our RPM Challenge Experiences
Dave stole my song
Dave at Church
Dave Murdered His Amp
Simplifying Your Equipment
Why no Pop Songs in home recording
Mario's Site at http://lets-go-digital.blogspot.com/
Visit Zoetrope's new Backstage area of the forums for songs in progress, ideas, lyrics and anything else that's musical but not a full song viewforum.php?f=40

The video for Bruno Mars doing a Nirvana/Michael Jackson mashup is at the end.

Relatives song info is here:Lyrically, the song is about love- well, more to the point, breaking up. A relationship has to be collaboration between two willing people, and some women don’t seem to be capable of seeing how good they really have it- “you find sorrow in your treasure”. But, in the end you realize that you are better off moving on- “In the dark, I find the sun”. It was inspired by a close friend of mine who was going through a divorce, in spite of the fact that he completely built his whole life around his wife. So, the song was built around those ideas, and written on an acoustic guitar. After the rough song was “sketched out”, Mike Mitchell, our lead guitarist, recorded some rough guitar takes which were uploaded to the “SendSpace” file sharing site. Jim Tamburini (his real name, by the way) downloaded the .wav files and imported them into his DAW, and put together the drum tracks. He sent back separate .wav files of the kick, snare/hi-hat, toms, and cymbals, which Mike and I re-imported, and then set about the task of recording all of the finished guitar and vocal tracks.

Actually taking the rare step of writing while listening, and reviewing it as I listen!

First song -
I think its a little unfair to talk about great steaming piles of home made hits before launching into this song without noting that it ISNT one of your 20 songs. Its a nice song, nicely produced

Back to every 2 weeks - Great! Let me know if you want me to sit in on a show to give one of you a break (mind you, I have said this so many times and nobody ever takes me up on it !!)

You guys talking about running out of ideas - you need to write 3 times as many rough sketches and throw out the duds- dont waste time on any one idea until you find yourself falling in love with it!!

2nd song - Enjoyed it! Excellent all round song with good cockney attitude in the vocals

recording in the van? I really like the idea, unfortunately in Houston people die if they are left in a vehicle without air conditioning for more than 20 minutes

Last song - good one to round off with

So there you have it - An incoherent rambling post from me - but at least I got the first reply in!
As you can see I had to step away from the computer for the last half of the show, so my comments suddenly become brief

Make Me Crawl - Mario Gozum aka Pill - Delightful. The opening reminds me of Fleetwood Mac's "Sarah," and the vocals remind me of CSN&Y. I love when it kicks in to high gear electric. Well done.

Maryland! Wow. I am in Maryland, I think.

I've been on HMHS and I am the complete opposite of pro. What would be the complete opposite of pro? , yea, that's me.

Dave, six songs? I haven't seen your songs updated. I'll check it out.

Tony, your songs for the most part, are very well produced.

Dave, I agree. The RPM Challenge has me interested again in music in general and writing and recording my songs in particular. I just don't want to have to do 10 songs in 28 days again.

Thanks for nod. All mine are demos. Ah, I appreciate the comments. The covers of my songs are the things I am most proud of, I would have to say.

The New Rise of the Foot Soldier - The Lions - Amazing. What a great recording. There is a very thin line between what is considered "pro" and what is made at home (or in a metal shop and community hall). Cool song.

I think writing a pop song is probably very hard. That is why there are relatively few writers who can do it well. If it were easy they would be paying minimum wage for writing them. I think they pay a little better then that.

I know not this Bruno fellow. I don't think I've ever intentionally listened to a mash-up.

One thing I do on more than a few of my songs is record the song to a single drum loop and then remove the drums from the final mix. What may sound very rustic was actually recorded to a drum loop.

Relative - Yesterday's Addiction - Another nice one. This one has a sort of Fleetwood Mac vibe too. (Not to mention Boston too.) I like this.

I've long suspected that it is very hard to write a great pop song-- it's catchy or it isn't-- less room for error, in a way. Similarly, I've often thought it might well be harder to write great comedy than tragedy. But we don't always notice the greatness because ABBA or Father Ted aren't "serious" works of art (we're told).
And I say all this as someone who grew up the ultimate sad-faced Smiths-Cure-Nick Cave-obsessed indie kid who also only read Serious Books and so on. As I've got older I've come to appreciate fun things a lot more.
I used to have a big problem with "assembly line" music but my feelings are now more ambiguous. Think Motown, the Brill Building, etc-- all about manufacturing groups, manufacturing hits, churning out product-- and yet, there was inspiration there too, of course. The inspirational bits may have been in spite of rather than because of this assembly-line approach, but I'm not sure about that.
With all that in mind, and because I've started watching Glee (everyone I meet these days-- even the most unlikely people-- are crazy about it), I came up with the chorus of a total pop song-- total bubblegum and therefore utterly out of (musical) character. I think I might try to make a proper recording of it just as a challenge. Can we make shiny, bright, polished pop songs in our home studios? (Part of the challenge, I think, is that you just can't have any lo-fi "charm"-- it really has to be polished to the nth degree.) We shall see.

Well I'd love to hear what you've got now I agree that "sheen" is difficult to replicate though again the Motown, Jackson 5 stuff really isn't like that, or Abba for that matter. That came about more recently and applies to most genre's.

will agree with tony on the lack of 'sheen' in motown, that stuff is pretty raw soundwise, but that adds to it charm, rather than detracts from it.
on the other hand, Abba does seem to have a certain 'sheen' to it to me.
not a bad thing, as it seems appropriate for what they were doing.

fabkebab wrote:You guys talking about running out of ideas - you need to write 3 times as many rough sketches and throw out the duds- dont waste time on any one idea until you find yourself falling in love with it!!

That is what I am doing with RPM, only I am not throwing out the duds...

fabkebab wrote:recording in the van? I really like the idea, unfortunately in Houston people die if they are left in a vehicle without air conditioning for more than 20 minutes

In Cincinnati, I have to turn the heat on for 10 minutes so I don't freeze to death.

The Cracks wrote:Dave, six songs? I haven't seen your songs updated. I'll check it out.

I just added two more of the best to Soundclick. Need more time in the day. I have a couple others pretty much done but I am not quite ready for publication on those. I have one week to finish 3 more songs!!!

Maybe Tony will be so kind as to update my thread to let people know the songs are there...

storpotaten wrote:And no, I never recorded anything in the car. You were probably thinking of Gary Davies. Apologies are expected.

Ooops. You are right. It was actually both Gary and Tony. You and the potatoes just record in the closet, right?

ornaith wrote:Part of the challenge, I think, is that you just can't have any lo-fi "charm"-- it really has to be polished to the nth degree.)

I think the polish is the hard part. That is the "money maker" those producers have I guess. I tend to gravitate to the less polished stuff, or at least the more natural sounding stuff. Though I do have to admit to tapping my toe to Party in the USA quite a number of times, including last night. lol

fabkebab wrote:You guys talking about running out of ideas - you need to write 3 times as many rough sketches and throw out the duds- dont waste time on any one idea until you find yourself falling in love with it!!

look over that 'dud' carefully, chances are the 'germ' of the idea or something else is worth saving.
save that little piece for another song as a bridge, a verse, a transition, etc.
or put enough little pieces together to create another song.

I try to record everything, even if it's just 8 bars of an idea. It's funny how much I forget. And it's always interesting to listen to songs with titles like New Song Cmaj7 125, Subs 6(1), Synth 110 Jam, and, my favorite, Newer Song in Cmaj7 125.

I’ve been following and listening to both of your RPM challenges – at the time of writing Tony seems done and Dave is trying to trick us into thinking he’s done more than he actually has by numbering his 5th song number 7! I have all the songs on my ipod and am dipping in and out, enjoying it all.

Either of you think you’ll go back and flesh out any of the songs later?

I like the look of that Tascam recorder Dave, I totally get what you’re saying about the fiddly, menu driven Zoom gear. It takes a lot of use on those things to get familiar enough with them that you don’t spend as long pressing buttons as recording!

Second song – multi-location recording eh? Lots of ear candy here, I like the way instruments and drums suddenly drop in and out. Guitar tones are great too.

“Jesus Painter”

I haven’t really followed the “pop” thread, but I think most home recorders are guitar focused, and pop music of the kind Tony is referring to isn’t. Home recorders are in the main musicians who want to record their output whereas pop music is not musically driven, but sales driven – there is a specific target audience. There are exceptions of course. I suspect though that there are other places out there where there’s plenty of home produced pop music on offer – don’t forget that the origins of these forums is Zoom gear, which is aimed at guitarists. I bet if you go on a keyboard based forum you’ll find more poppy songs.

Good rock vocals on the last song. Thoroughly well done song all round I thought.

I won't do any rework on any of them. I can never go back to an existing song. Something to talk about I guess.

Regarding the pop music. DickL made a good point that you can often find versions of top, even modern, pop songs done by guitarists or bands and they often hold up well which shows there really is a decent song underneath.